Monday, June 15, 2009

The Devil is in the Details...

It was years ago that I first heard the expression: "The Devil is in the details."

At the time it meant that small details can de-rail the truth, and de-rail good plans.

I appreciated reading commentary that points out details that reveal important truths lurking beneath the surface of a global address by Mr. Obama.

For instance: I appreciate the commentor noting that true Christians never speak of Jesus as being currently dead.The fact that He arose from the dead is what Christianity is all about!

Also that Christians speak of only the Bible as "Holy."

All political and academic institutions refer to the Holy Bible as simply "The Bible." Students are taught to do the same in our public schools.They supposedly are also taught to refer to all religious writings sans the term "Holy"-and that to apply the word "Holy" indicated that the writings are sacred and true to the individual speaking.

Yes... once again I had missed a few details that definitely had the devil in them....In case you had missed it...here is the article for your benefit:

During his White House years, William Jefferson Clinton — someone Judge Sonia Sotomayor might call a "white male" — was dubbed "America's first black president" by a black admirer.

Applying the standard of identity politics and pandering to a special interest that earned Mr. Clinton that distinction, Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America's first Muslim president.

This is not to say, necessarily, that Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim any more than Mr. Clinton actually is black. After his five months in office, and most especially after his just-concluded visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.

What little we know about Mr. Obama's youth certainly suggests that he not only had a Kenyan father who was Muslim, but spent his early, formative years as one in Indonesia. As the president likes to say, "much has been made" — in this case by him and his campaign handlers — of the fact that he became a Christian as an adult in Chicago, under the now-notorious Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright.

With Mr. Obama's unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "the Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself. Consider the following indicators:

Mr. Obama referred four times in his speech to "the Holy Koran." Non-Muslims — even pandering ones — generally don't use that Islamic formulation.

Mr. Obama established his firsthand knowledge of Islam (albeit without mentioning his reported upbringing in the faith) with the statement, "I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed."

Again, "revealed" is a depiction Muslims use to reflect their conviction that the Koran is the word of G-d, as dictated to Muhammad.

Then the president made a statement no believing Christian — certainly not one versed, as he professes to be, in the ways of Islam — would ever make. In the context of what he euphemistically called the "situation between Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs," Mr. Obama said he looked forward to the day "…when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them) joined in prayer."

Now, the term "peace be upon them" is invoked by Muslims as a way of blessing deceased holy men. According to Islam, that is what all three were — dead prophets. Of course, for Christians, Jesus is the living and immortal Son of G0d.

In the final analysis, it may be beside the point whether Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim. In the Speech and elsewhere, he has aligned himself with adherents to what authoritative Islam calls Shariah — notably, the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood — to a degree that makes Mr. Clinton's fabled affinity for blacks pale by comparison.

For example, Mr. Obama has — from literally his inaugural address onward — inflated the numbers and, in that way and others, exaggerated the contemporary and historical importance of Muslim-Americans in the United States. In the Speech, he used the Brotherhood's estimates of "nearly 7 million Muslims" in this country, at least twice the estimates from other, more reputable sources. (Who knows? By the time Mr. Obama's friends in the radical Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) perpetrate their trademark books-cooking as deputy 2010 census takers, the official count may well claim considerably more than 7 million Muslims are living here.)

Even more troubling were the commitments the president made in Cairo to promote Islam in America. For instance, he declared: "I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."

(Note from Jill: Where was that found in his oath of office???? And how about negative sterotyping of conservative Christians and Jews? When is he going to take on that?)

He vowed to ensure that women can cover their heads, including, presumably, when having their photographs taken for passports, driver's licenses or other identification purposes. He also pledged to enable Muslims to engage in zakat, their faith's requirement for tithing, even though four of the eight types of charity called for by Shariah can be associated with terrorism. Not surprisingly, a number of Islamic "charities" in this country have been convicted of providing material support for terrorism.

Particularly worrying is the realignment Mr. Obama has announced in U.S. policy toward Israel. While he pays lip service to the "unbreakable" bond between America and the Jewish state, the president has unmistakably signaled that he intends to compel the Israelis to make territorial and other strategic concessions to Palestinians to achieve the hallowed two-state solution. In doing so, he ignores the inconvenient fact that both the Brotherhood's Hamas and Abu Mazen's Fatah remain determined to achieve a one-state solution, whereby the Jews will be driven "into the sea."

Whether Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim or simply plays one in the presidency may, in the end, be irrelevant. What is alarming is that in aligning himself and his policies with those of Shariah-adherents such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the president will greatly intensify the already enormous pressure on peaceful, tolerant American Muslims to submit to such forces — and heighten expectations, here and abroad, that the rest of us will do so as well.

4 comments:

Me thinks.. .that every girl should have a research librarian to help decifer the ins and outs of the neighbors politics. I am amazed at how people and especially celebritys hang on every word he says .. .clearly caught up in the excitement he has caused.

Hi Jill! I have to say....being in England for three weeks I hardly saw any news at all...no politics, no sports, no tragedies...it was lovely. But I see life is still going on here in the USA as it did before we left! No surprise in that. Your post here was a very interesting and informative read, as always.

I'm Jill. I'm a librarian and milliner now living in Salt Lake City with my husband of 37 years and my three shelter adopted cats. I'm 60, was born and expected I would spent my whole life in San Diego, save for two years in Corvallis Oregon in college.
Then beginning in 1997, right after our youngest graduated from high school my husband and I began "empty nesting" on the move. We lived one year in Almenden CA (San Jose area), two years in Dallas TX and eight years on Houston TX before moving Salt Lake City in the fall of 2008.
I love it here, but counting on Heaven being my ultimate hometown! I do hope we will one day be neighbors there?
I have two adult children; a daughter in San Diego and a son (and daughter-in-law) who also live in Salt Lake City; two beloved grandsons, and parents who were born and still live in San Diego, and who read my blog every day.